Editorial: BOE leadership and opponents owe students and the public an apology

Published 8:49 pm, Saturday, December 2, 2017

Let’s hope most of the students were not watching.

What happened at the New Haven Board of Education meeting earlier this month was not only an embarrassing display of poor leadership but put a black eye on the city of New Haven and its ability to meet the educational needs of the next generation.

Throwing the punches were opposing board members and members of the public over the appointment of Carol Birks, the chief of staff in Hartford Public Schools, as the next superintendent of New Haven Public Schools.

Education is a heated topic these days with emotions running high over inequitable funding, disagreements over charter schools and who will sit in the ever-revolving chair as superintendent of schools.

But this was off the charts.

In case you missed it, social decorum was thrown out the window and the “adults” in the room put on a shameful display of a Jerry Springer-type reality show complete with shouting matchings, accusations being hurled, threats being levied — and an invitation to resolve the issue in a duel.

The only thing missing was chants of “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry” as BOE members and opponents shouted at each other, pointed fingers and got into each others’ faces before police had to be called in.

And in this age of social media, their embarrassing and despicable display of immaturity is now posted online in the Register, the New Haven Independent and elsewhere for everyone to see how the BOE handles the heat.

And it is not pretty — but leads to serious questions.

This is the leadership our youth are supposed to look up to and emulate? These are the people whose decisions are supposed to guide our youth’s education to help prepare them for the future?

They sure have some explaining to do — particularly coming from adults in an urban arena where police, teachers, social workers, counselors and others are trying to teach youth to resolve their disagreements with discourse, not aggression and violence.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that tempers have flared up with this board and its detractors. It has been a year of endless fighting and public squabbling at meetings over the selection process for the next schools chief.

This is not just a problem in New Haven. The inability to have peaceful, meaningful discourse over an issue has spread from the halls of Congress to the halls leading to BOE meetings in Litchfield County — and it must stop.

How can a group of people come to a consensus when the argument for or against an issue can’t be made over the raucous din of disagreement? How can any project move ahead and be implemented successfully when hard heads divided by anger keep colliding?

Civil decorum must return to public meetings whether there is an agreement with the process or the outcome or not.

We cannot hope to teach youth how to resolve their issues like adults when the adults are acting like children in a schoolyard brawl.

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We don't find fault in the passion these people have to get the best education possible for city students. But their disturbing method of getting across their point of view must not go unchallenged.

The BOE, its leadership and opponents owe the city, its residents and most importantly, the students they represent, an apology.